the mosquitoes infested land

i am back from ubin, with mosquito bite ridden legs, aching calves and stinky clothes. just wanna laze around at home the rest of the day, but no, i still got pool class later. hope i have enough energy for later on.

i wouldnt say the ubin trip was fun, fun, afterall it was a preparation camp to give us a preview of what we'll be experiencing in cambodia. i got to know my fellow team members better. realised it takes certain events to bring out a person's character, they further highlight each person's strengths and weakness. different situations call for different forms of leadership and hence different individuals. some people function well in air conditioned rooms, organisation of events, when it really puts us to a test when you're out in the wild, drenched with sweat, stuck in the middle of god-knows-where, suffering with lack of sleep...

night started at 8pm on sunday, and ended around 5pm the next day. i only had 30 mins' sleep the whole time. strangely at the end of it all, i wasnt sleepy. i was tired definitely, but so long as there are activities to keep me going, i'm fine.

the first challenge
12 of us, excluding 3 of the leaders, split into groups of 4, given 7 challenges to complete. 7 because we are project angel 7, haha. first challenge: each group was given 7 dollars to buy food for the next day's breakfast and lunch. we bought:

1. bread - $1
2. kaya - $1.30
3. 1.5 litres of water - $1.10
4. beehoon - $1. 10
5. 10 eggs - $1.30 (so cheap??)
6. 4 onions - $0.20 (so cheap again..??)
7. 4 apples - $1 (bargined with the uncle, initially it was 3 for $1, hahhaa..)
8. small packets of salt and oil - foc, got it from a nice hawker auntie

cool eh?? i never knew you could buy so many things with just $7!

second challenge
10.30pm
to find our way to a place in ubin, without using our torches, except when we want to read the map. it was kind of eerie to walk in the dark in the middle of the night, wondering what would jump out from the trees. ubin has no lampposts, but surprisingly the moon was enough source of light for us to see. was black, but not pitch darkness. it's not that scary when you walk in groups of 4. we almost went the wrong way though. apparently there are some roads not indicated on the maps. dont think navigating around a small island like ubin is as easy as u think, things are never what you think it seems, esp at night.

reaching the house, we were given a crash course on how to pitch tents. not that most of us never dont it before, but we kind of needed a revision. like for me..i've certainly had experience.. obs, obs sabah, berkelah just last dec..but eh..my memory fails me.. and more often than not, i always have people to rely on to do the dirty work for me.. *ashamed* =X.. time to be self sufficient and independent and stop relying on other people..

third and fourth challenge
12.30am
find our way to chek jawa, which is on the other side of the island, approximately 5km away from where we were. burden was on our team leader, keng moh to lead the way, while the rest of us followed. took us a couple of hours to get there. lost our way in the forested area once, but managed to get back on track soon. along the way, it was the chattering, singing, crapping that kept us going.

just one word - exhausted.


alex, tired out.

back at camp. 6.40am. chatted a while, ate a little. all of us were stony faced now. some marched straight to the tents, zombie-style, to sleep. a few of us didnt even catch a wink cos the next challenge was to clear out of the camp site at 8am. haha. at first i thought perhaps it was better to stay awake, than to sleep for a while then wake up again. but after a while i thought, some sleep is bound to do some good, even if it's just for 30 mins right? so i took a power nap from 7am to 7.30am, then got up to unpitch the tents, pack my stuff, wash up a little, and had hard boiled egg for breakfast!


me dismantling a tent, oh no, caught in specs!


yay..me and xj playing with the hard boiled eggs..


waiting to set off


off we go..

fifth challenge
11am
to make our to noordin beach, which was on the extreme north of the island, and to obtain some stories from the native villagers. we heard some pretty interesting stories about ubin. did you know that a wild elephant actually swam to ubin from malaysia a while ago? the experts were informed on the mainland singapore and they brought 2 other elephants from the zoo to pin the wild elephant down. sounded a little odd to me. wondered how that could be done.

a tiger was cited a while ago too, by some tourists, but it was never found. an uncle from a provison also told us that there used to be wild chickens on the island. they flew from malaysia. yes i know, chickens dont fly do they? apparently some do, the wild ones. there used to be more than 500 people living on ubin. immigrants workers, until they were relocated to the mainland by the gov. there are only 50 native villagers on ubin now. most of them stayed because they have no choice...where else could they go..what could they do? on ubin, they have businesses, shops..how can they afford the same thing on mainland singapore? this very old lady told us she likes staying on the island..peace, quiet..and occasional visitors like us.


noordin beach

that's for old people i guess..i wouldnt survive a day on ubin. haha. tranquility, peace, quiet....not that i dont treasure these..but i much prefer noise, bustling activities...give me the city anytime.


our lunch: ham + onion + omelette, was quite tasty, though i dont think you can tell from this pic haha..


catching up on our major sleep debt, everyone nodding off to sleep except for the few of us, trying to clean up the mess tins.

sixth challenge
1pm

a tennis ball is placed on top of a doughnut thingy in the middle, string tied around it. each of us hold on to a string of different lengths and bring it up a flight of stairs. pretty fun!


more and more people are blindfolded as time passes, up to the rest of us who still have our vision to guide them along, making it all more challenging.

seventh challenge
ranking a list of items in order of importance when you land in a desert with 13 other people.


discussion in groups


fake faint: joe wanted to test us on how we will react to the situation when someone has fainted. poor yongyao was made to lie on the dirty grass with mosquitoes flying around him for a while. pretty convincing at first, gave me a shock initially but he gave the game away after a while when he giggled!!! hahahaa..still it did make me realised the importance of first aid training. what if it was real?? i'll totally be at a loss of what to do. in the pic: hazel and soh ai carrying him.

the end
5pm

all smiles at the end of it all...